Fringe Groups into politics

I've previously revealed that I keep an eye on Voices for Freedom by subscribing to their email newsletter, where they send out communications to their flock. I don't pretend that they're not aware they have “moles” who subscribe - and so it's likely that their newsletter only contains the most sanitised versions of their thoughts. I don't have the personal free time or inclination to subscribe to their Telegram channels to see what's really being discussed behind the scenes.

This week a mailout from Voices for Freedom contained the revelation that they were going to get into politics. I've always had the suspicion that this was their intention. Claire Deeks, one of the three VfF women is already a failed political candidate - having stood for Advance NZ in the 2020 election. Advance NZ received just 1% of the party votes, well short of the 5% threshold that is required to make it into parliament.

To quote directly from their newsletter:

“So in answer to the question: to politics or not to politics?

The short answer is yes: the road leads to politics. The long answer is our priority remains in building a New Zealand we want to hand down to our children. A New Zealand of resilient, self-sufficient, supportive communities able to weather any storm, regardless if it is caused by our own politicians or power-hungry global organisations.”

While this all sounds nice and innocuous at first glance, I suspect the way they define their terms and conditions might well cause alarm for most voters.

Another Voices for Freedom supporter and adjacent is Sue Grey, who is a candidate for the NZ Outdoors and Freedom party. She's recently announced that she'll be standing as a candidate at the Tauranga bi-election that resulted from the retirement of ex-National Party leader, Simon Bridges, from parliament last month.

So, it appears that there will be various options on the ballot for the 2023 general election. My prediction is that it seems unlikely that these fringe elements are capable of attracting 5% of the party vote in aggregate, and that, given their egos, it's likely that the vote will be split among multiple competing parties, which further dilutes their effect. Anyway, all remains to be seen.

And speaking of Voices for Freedom - they were banned from Facebook sometime last year, but have been periodically popping up again. Last week, they sprung up yet again, with a page called Voices for Freedom 3.0 (they'd previously tried 2.0, but that got quickly removed).

Voices for Freedom 3.0 was up for a few days, but is now down. I fully expect that there will be a 4.0 version up at some point - these people never give up, it seems.

Of more concern is the insidious spreading of disinformation content by others, or by those directly involved in the organisation's leadership. For example, Claire Deeks regularly links to Voices for Freedom sites or has videos with the Voices for Freedom logo on them. So, really Facebook's algorithms are doing a pretty poor job at recognising content that has been removed from other parts of the platform. From my reading of the situation, it appears that it requires direct action by people reporting posts in great enough numbers to force Facebook to take action.

Facebook states that it uses AI technology to detect bad content and remove 90% of it before it's reported. However, it seems that it certainly helps to report these things - that there's a positive correlation between people reporting and the content then disappearing, or the profile being removed or restricted for a period of time.

Essentially, we have to treat social media platforms as a black box - we don't know their inner workings and they change over time anyway, as algorithms are refined - which, incidentally, always made me suspicious of those “gurus” who claimed SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) expertise that could guarantee that your website would appear at the top of search engine rankings. One part of me hopes that social media platforms die, given the role they've had in promoting misinformation. On the other hand, they've also played a role in bringing together groups of people such as skeptics to better battle misinformation.